True To Life

Cynda Williams` Own Experiences Help Prepare Her For `False Move`

May 13, 1992|By Clifford Terry.

In her first motion picture, Spike Lee`s ``Mo` Better Blues,`` Cynda Williams plays a strikingly sleek torch singer who revs it up in the fast track in Manhattan.

In her current motion picture, Carl Franklin`s ``One False Move,`` she plays a fugitive who winds up in a town light-years from the Big Crunch. Its name is Star City, Ark., but the actual location was an Arkansas town called Cotton Plant.

``We were filming there for about four or five weeks,`` Williams said during an interview in Chicago. ``There was nothing at all to do in Cotton Plant. Not even bowling. That whole area is dying. They had to build the little restaurant in the movie; they didn`t even have that.

``Actually, we stayed in Brinkley, about 20 minutes away, in a little motel on the highway. That was the extent of Brinkley. And they didn`t take too kindly to people of color. There was a bar in the motel, and we had a mixed crew and a mixed cast, and the local people had problems with black guys dancing with white girls.``

In the film noir-style thriller, she plays a character whose given name is Lila but who has taken the name of Fantasia, probably after she moved to Los Angeles.

In `30s movies, she would have been called a gun moll, but now she is just a single-parent loser who is being dragged along into violent crime by her psychotic, drug-dealing, white-trash boyfriend, Ray Malcolm (played by co- scriptwriter Billy Bob Thornton, whom Williams met on the set and married). In one respect, Williams can identify with Lila, because she also comes from interracial parentage.

``Like her, I`ve had experiences in my life that haven`t always been positive because of my cultural background. When I was growing up in Chicago, I was surrounded by black people, and I got made fun of because I was a `half- breed.` And when we moved to Muncie, I got it from the other side. A big difference, though, is that I knew my father; Lila never knew hers.``

The oldest of five children of a Chicago police officer and a hospital pathologist, Williams was reared on the South Side around 103rd Street and King Drive. When she was in the 8th grade, she moved to Muncie with her mother (her parents had separated) and attended high school there, becoming involved in theater.

At Ball State University, she majored in theater and studied voice, and after college took off for New York, set on pursuing either an acting or a singing career. (``I love them equally. Right now I`m singing with an alternate-rock band in Los Angeles, but what I really love is folk music and jazz.``)

At age 24, she landed the role of sleek, steely singer Clarke Bentancourt in ``Mo` Better Blues`` (1990), one of two women romantically involved with trumpet player Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington). Later, she recorded a W.C. Handy ballad, ``Harlem Blues,`` that she sings in the movie, and it wound up No. 1 on the R&B charts.

``Spike Lee and Carl Franklin are very different directors. Spike likes to make a lot of statements in his films by making statements. Carl likes to make a statement by showing real life. I really like Spike as a director, but he`s very visual and very technical. Carl is just, like, let`s show really what happens.

``The (`Mo` Better`) role seemed different when I was shooting it than the way it turned out. Clarke ended up being an ambitious, manipulative girl. I guess the change happened in the editing process. At first, Spike told me that he wanted to make both women very positive characters because he`s been bashed all over because of his portrayal of women.``

The ``Mo` Better`` assignment did come with a caveat. Williams was required to play a couple of topless love-making scenes. ``It didn`t trouble me when I was doing it, but it troubled me when I saw it on the screen-and I`ve only seen it once. I mean, I can`t even watch when someone else is doing it.

``I had called my family, and said I was going to audition for a part that called for nudity. My father and mother told me to do what I had to do. But the rest of the family-I have grandparents and all-said, like, `Oh, no.`

Since then, they`ve rented `Mo` Better,` but I have no idea what they thought about those scenes or the movie as a whole. I never really wanted to get into a conversation about it.

``I think I will talk to them about `One False Move.` Because even I can watch this film and not be embarrassed.``